Australians working in China are terrified
|
Australians working in China are terrified. The arrest of the general manager for Rio Tinto’s iron ore operations in China has sent shockwaves through the expat community. Phones are being tapped, emails are being intercepted and people are scared to even mention Stern Hu (his Chinese name is Hu ShiTai), the Australian national who has been arrested for allegedly stealing state secrets, along with three of his Chinese co-workers. It’s quite rattling to hear friends and contacts in China speak with such fear in their voices. Anyone who has worked as a journalist in China knows of such stories: being followed by secret police, having notes and tape recorders confiscated, being denied visas. But this is the first time I’ve heard colleagues and friends in the business sector say “my phone line is compromised”, or “I’m putting myself at risk by talking to you” or “please, you have to understand that my family, my friends, my home, they’re all in China”. These are people who’ve been in China for decades. They can’t just get on a plane and come home to Australia if they displease the Chinese government. Rowan Callick, former China correspondent for The Australian and a fount of knowledge on all things Motherland, rightly points out that overseas businesspeople in China have generally been treated with care by the Chinese government, thanks to their contribution to the nation’s economic ascent to power. But make no mistake — the balance of power has shifted. Amid tense iron ore price negations and the breakdown of Rio Tinto’s deal with Chinalco, which constituted a serious blow to China’s pride, a critical factor in relationships with the Chinese (the notion of ‘face’ or mianz), China is flexing its muscles and showing Australia and the world who’s boss. Stern Hu is well-known in the Australian expat community. Many of the people I spoke to have either run into him at meetings or functions, or know him personally. That, combined with his seniority as an executive — he is second in command at Rio Tinto only to China head Anthony Loo — makes him a strange and conspicuous target for a government looking to make a point. While Australia is doing all it can to try to gain access to Hu and see that his interests are represented, our government must also hold grave fears for his three co-workers. They cannot be abandoned — they were contractors working for an Anglo-Australian company. As more details filter out of China slowly (the nature of the charges against him were only confirmed overnight), the eyes of the world and of course Australia will be firmly planted on China to see how this issue is resolved. It could forever change the way foreigners do business there and chill relations between Australia and its biggest trading partner. |
|
|
|
14 Comments
The Rio-Tinto — Chinalco connection seems self evident in this case; and the Chinese government starts to show its true colours (as if Tibet and XinJiang weren’t enough).
Their behaviour gives a sense of relief that the deal fell through, and Australia retained some control over its prize assets.
Rio Tinto is a UK company with vast Australian interests. It is controlled out of the City of London not Sydney or Melbourne. I suspect it is Rio’s UK financial masters that the Chinese are concerned about. This game is being played at a very high level and it appears to me that the Chinese Australians in the firing line are merely pawns in a very high stakes game.
A bit of perspective here. No-one seriously expects Hu to spend years in the can. The major harm is the damage China is doing to itself and its already tattered reputation. It seems to be yet another example of the greedy factionalism among China’s elites and their willingness to use state power to further their own factional interests at the expense of their nation’s best interests.
Re: Rio Tinto as a UK company - I’m happy to be corrected on that one. Although I would have thought their duel listing on LSX and ASX would give Australia some level of interest.
Regardless of which, as David mentioned, its not a good look for China! Very interesting comment on the factionalism.
Isn’t this just a game of hard ball. After if you play with doggies you get fleas, don’t you??
Will the Australia-China Free Trade Agreement include a Get Out of Jail Free card?
As an Aussie journalist working in China, I can’t say I agree that “Australians working in China are terrified”. Speaking for myself, I don’t feel that my position as a foreigner working within the Chinese system is any more precarious than it has been over the past few years. Emails have always been intercepted, phones have always been tapped. I feel for Hu and hope that he is able to return home soon, but I think it should be dealt with as an individual situation, rather than as a portent of doom for Sino-Australian trade relations.
RICHARD WILSON, Con-Zinc Rio Tinto certainly started out as an Australian company.
Originally it started out as the Zinc Corporation. Regrettably, and at a time when anything Australian was almost passed on a plate to the UK, the company merged in nineteen forty nine with the UK company Imperial Smelting Corporation. This ended up being called Consolidated Zinc. It had another name change in 1962 when it merged with Rio Tinto (UK) and became Conzinc Riotinto.
It is listed on both the London and Australian stock exchanges and should be an object lesson to all governments as to what happens when we sell out to foreign companies. Just as BHP is an object lesson to what can happen when we hang onto something.
PWNEROUS. Of course it gives Australia some level of interest. Good one!
The Chinese mind can be amazingly simplistic. Face must never be relinquished.
It is the same mentality that makes tiger-bones prized for the strength of the animal itself, pity about their extinction. Monkey’s brains-to be eaten while the animal is still living. Because, don’t you see, the brain will be passed on to the recipient. And rhinocerous horn to help a flagging penis. What wonderful and barbaric beliefs; worthy of the middle ages. Yet they want us to solicitous of their ‘Face?’
I will be totally solicitous of their Face the moment they stop cruelly butchering wild life for such imbecile and obscene hopes.
Is morality all about making sure that the piles of coinage add up?
Somewhere along the way many people have managed to delude themselves that China is something other than a monolithic totalitarian state where individuals only have those rights that the state apparatus might deem expedient.
The Chinese Warlords (ruling class, bosses, honchos – call them what you will) have no interest in anything other than enriching themselves and consolidating power to pass onto their children – and in doing so they have enslaved millions of people and embarked on an industrial project that is destroying any attempt at mitigating our impact on the worldwide environment.
I didn’t vote for this. I don’t privilege cash over human beings – but our politicians do. Australian, American and European powers have decided that slave labour is perfectly acceptable. Child labour is perfectly acceptable. Utter intolerance by the state of any dissent is acceptable. As long as we get our cheap doo-dads and the crimes are committed far far away.
We should have nothing to do with this monstrous regime. When you enable a crime you are morally responsible for complicity in that crime and whenever an Aussie goes shopping they determine that a Chinese citizen will continue to be enslaved.
Our pollies might have no moral compass to guide them but I certainly do. Every time I go shopping my heart breaks a little more. Human rights are not ‘Western Rights’.
If you want to find out what a Western politician’s moral stance is – on any issue – just add up the columns. The biggest total must be right.
PS - this article should have been headlined CHINES CITIZENS TERRIFIED - 24/7
Kevin will get us through this.
If Turnbull was Prime Minister, I wonder what opposition leader Kevin would be demanding that he do? Kevin would intelligently keep quiet of course, as this is what should be done, and this is what Turnbull should be doing right now. Typical wedge politics from th elib lyers. They never learned from the children overboard events that we know they ly and Haneef’s capture and torture is a prime example of their intolerance for other cultures. We can’t rely on Turnbull and his lame brained assistants to give good advice. China is a thousand year culture and needs to be dealt with carefully and with respect. For starters would Turnbull be prepared to give them a simple bow and acknowledgement of the importance of Chines old-age wisdom. No, he wouldn’t have the brains to start building relationships, which is crushal to success.
Kevin will get us through this.
Send Turnball,Bishop and Bill heffie to sort this mess out, Whoops forgot Abbott as well. Iam sure they would change their attitude on this.
all part of Howards legacy
Remember the Iraq wheat debacle
Its little wonder other countries think Australias
a bit suspect in regard to international trade and ethics
Not to mention the complete lack of any legal consequences
to either the players or the government of the day.
We appear to have a what ever it takes attitude where our export
interests are concerned and are certainly in no position to be sanctimonious
A certain Dr. Haneef must be giggling
Just as well John Winston Howard and his gang of thugs weren’t running the country when all this happened. Howard would be masturbating on a bed of rose petals for the sake of more media coverage. Alexander Downer would have had an attack of the vapours and a hissy fit, before offering to sell the Chinese his fish-net tights. The Angry Abbott would be telling the Chinese how to have sex and produce as many offspring-to be brought up as Catholics, of course, and Malcolm the Mad would have increased his holdings in BHP, Rio and Buckley’s Chance as an outsider.
Ah yes, the moral parameters of those pious Libs would be hard pressed to cover a postage stamp. Their ethics would be worth one hundred and eighty blank pages.